Stage-5: Facing Hard Reality
Information & Knowledge
The basis of the Stage-5 cultural shift to the is simple: press for facts to aid their realization, while facts absolutely depend on goals for meaning.
The needed requires all to value solid knowledge about problematic situations, to value what staff on the spot know, and to capitalize properly on available information—whether for the previous day, week, month, year or more.
Information is used in organizations long before this, but it would be odd to describe it as a learning tool or way to enhance commitment. 
Instead, information…
More on information misuse
In «pseudo-empiricist» management, learning and commitment do not come into the equation, because:
● Information is divided into «good» and «bad» with a shoot the messenger! or find a scapegoat! rule when the news is «bad».
● Investigations are used either to get pre-determined answers or to let someone powerful off the hook.
● Information (rather than the situation) is managed i.e. figures are fiddled.
● Dissemination is restricted because information is seen as a source of power. Raw, slanted or even wrong information may be released as a coercive ploy.
● Presentations are persuasive propaganda, or confrontations, organized to prevent any serious questioning.
As pressure for achievement grows and risks increase, ignorance, imprecision and uncertainty become less and less acceptable. Reducing uncertainty by being objective appeals to many modern managers, but that does not clarify what is entailed in explicitly valuing information and knowledge.
Information Culture ≠ Computer Culture
Information is a far wider notion than computerization, because much essential knowledge is qualitative. The manager who does not observe operations at first-hand and avoids talking with staff would certainly have limited knowledge of the situation, however many computer print-outs he studies.
Computers are merely tools. Even if used well, they do not necessarily produce an . An is about investigating and learning from qualitative &/or quantitative information—with or without computers. Evidence and knowledge existed before computers were dreamed of.
Computerization is not merely the installation of wiring and new equipment, but a whole new way of working. So it is itself a culture-change project of some magnitude. Such a project is never particularly successful until the rationalist ethos is solid.
Because quantitative data is vital, it becomes possible and worthwhile at this stage to have sophisticated computer networking for managers. Well-developed IT systems speed up data flows, increase accuracy, flag unexpected variation or oversights, and aid comparisons and analyses.
Hard data often surprises people. However print-outs, networking and computers are worth little if users lack the necessary motivations and values.
Empiricist Values & Principles
In handling the situation:
Information Use
● Get first-hand knowledge and valid data wherever possible as a basis for decision-making and objective-setting.
● Use relevant information to ensure that plans will produce expected benefits for specified costs, including the cost of capital, opportunity costs &c.
● Monitor efficiency and effectiveness of routine operational activities with records that are regularly scrutinized.
● Develop or demand statistically valid quantification and measures.
● Use both corporate data and local knowledge properly.
● Insist on evidence rather than gut opinions, hazy speculation, and ex cathedra pronouncements.
● Ensure data standardization to maintain consistency and permit inter-departmental and inter-organizational comparisons.
● Prohibit deliberate misuse of information.
Increased certainty
● Manage risks by reducing uncertainty: get accurate information and use pilots and preliminary tests if possible.
● Inquire and check facts personally.
● Respect the knowledge of people on the spot.
● Use external consultants to minimize bias when investigating sensitive issues.
● Work with probabilities.
● Wherever possible, use computerization and statistical theory to reduce and quantify error.
● Ensure everyone supports collection of corporate data.
● Develop shared convictions about what the data says.
● Keep in touch with relevant research.
Systematic investigation
● Bolster existing knowledge and information by specially designed investigations.
● See unexpected or serious problems and new or major proposals as demanding inquiry.
● Always inquire when things go badly awry or success occurs unexpectedly.
● Resist the temptation to pursue easy options or guess desirable targets.
● Use a quasi-scientific approach: labeling, structuring and defining things properly.
● Try to be logical, objective and systematic.
● Develop an organizational capacity to apply an identify-investigate-solve-plan-do-check-correct schema for difficult but important decisions.
● Expect investigations and their outcomes to evoke contention and raise issues for departments and disciplines.
In handling the group:
Wide dissemination
● Most corporate data should be easily accessible by inter-linking and inter-facing computer systems.
● Make sure managers know what information is available and where.
● Move away from a 'need to know' policy: it is a recipe for paranoia, even when it is not used to subjugate or manipulate staff.
● Circulate special reports and project evaluations to participants and more widely where relevant.
● Expect people to know what is going on and provide time and support for the examination and digestion of information before meetings.
Lucid presentation
● Organize the facts so that they speak for themselves.
● Present information in relation to key issues and concerns.
● Keep theory and interpretation to a minimum.
● Provide information relevant to decisions in a way that enables its absorption.
● Don't confuse or swamp people with data.
● Exclude meaningless, inaccurate or untimely data.
● Use the most basic statistical tools, and avoid complex mathematics.
● Keep tables simple and support with colour, graphs and images wherever possible.
● Show the same information from different perspectives.
● Make comparisons over time and with other organizations.
Individualized knowledge
● Corporate data and analyses of external trends apply to everyone, but their significance depends on each manager's grasp of the facts in their own domain.
● Customize systems so that information is relevant and comes in the right form and at the right time for each manager.
● Ensure that expert assistants, previously seen as repositories of facts, now assist in designing and conducting specific investigations for line-managers.
● Respect variations between everyone's information needs.
● Hence permit managers to set up their own information systems within IT policy and with IT technical support.
● Recognize that every member of staff has unique knowledge that does not reside in any computer.
In handling yourself:
Dispassionate objectivity
● Discipline the inherent subjectivity in habit (pragmatism), roles (structuralism), vested interests (dialecticism), and values (rationalism) by becoming self-consciously objective.
● Make an effort to be impartial and even impersonal in the face of facts—reality has not been designed to fit you or anyone else.
● Not only must you have an open mind, you must want to know the facts.
● Be prepared to tolerate uncomfortable facts, whatever you may eventually choose to do with them.
As should be expected, there is an ever-present natural degeneration of , whose positive value is that it helps fuel determination to make a further transition: to the .
- But first consider issues in the installation of empiricist values.
Originally posted: 17-Jun-2011